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The Death of Couchsurfing?

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Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#191

Post by peterburkimsher »

nicksellen wrote: post #181
h0l0cube wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I saw that link on the BW forum post and now have my data :) It would be great if the data was signed, and it could be verified with a public key. That way you could have validated references for import into BW. Alas, I see nothing of the sort in the JSON.

I'm one of the Trustroots contributors, we have an old work-in-progress pull request to import couchsurfing data ( https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1086 ), but it needs some love. As mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219760 references is coming. The verification issue though for import is a big one, we couldn't just trust a JSON file the user has uploaded to have real references, there…

I still have an active CS account (Taiwan-registered) and can cross-check the references for any imported profiles. If there's a huge rush then no doubt my account could get blocked for bot-like activity, but I'm willing to do the verification for the first few thousand.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#192

Post by dkersten »

welly wrote: post #177
mnky9800n wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every woman I've met on couch surfing has been a victim of some kind of sexual harassment or violence due to someone they meet on couchsurfing. Basically they stay with a guy and he has expectations and is vocal if not forceful about it. Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them, didn't expect them to sleep with me, didn't ask them for sex, etc. I hosted for two years living in Berlin. That being said I…

I used to be very involved with couchsurfing in the late 2000s and early 2010s I had a high number of women couchsurfers, which came about from having positive feedback from other female couchsurfers, because like you they had their own bed and I wasn't trying to have sex with them. It started being a concern because I began to think that people looking at my profile would assume that I was just looking to host women…

I hosted a lot of people in summer of 2008. All of my housemates were into couchsurfing too (mixed gender house: two guys and three girls, that probably helped), so there was a period where we always hosted at least one person. One weekend, for a couchsurfing event in my city, we hosted 12 people at once! We eventually stopped hosting because people got busy and priorities changed, but our experience as hosts was very positive and I still attended local couchsurfing meetups for the next year or so. I made many friends and contacts through it.

We never received any negative feedback and were in high demand. Aside from that one super busy weekend, where things did get a bit cramped (but people knew in advance that it would be), nobody shared any beds or couches and couchsurfers had rooms separate from the hosts. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sharing beds with the host is... creepy (unless the person was given their own bed/couch and they mutually decided they wanted to share a bed, of course).

I miss couchsurfing too. I stopped being part of it around the time it got a sense for being a bit commercial. My circle of couchsurfing friends did it for the cultural exchange and at some point it drifted from that to just free accommodation and drinking parties. At least that’s the sense I got.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#193

Post by hatmatrix »

mnky9800n wrote: post #170
owenversteeg wrote: post #45

So I imagine there's a lot of people here that don't know Couchsurfing or what the big deal is. Couchsurfing has been one of the most important things in my life, so I'll do my best to explain why it's so special. The basic idea is you stay at a stranger's place, or you host a stranger at yours - completely for free, no money involved. Everyone does it differently. Some people plan their trip meticulously months in a…

Every woman I've met on couch surfing has been a victim of some kind of sexual harassment or violence due to someone they meet on couchsurfing. Basically they stay with a guy and he has expectations and is vocal if not forceful about it. Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them, didn't expect them to sleep with me, didn't ask them for sex, etc. I hosted for two years living in Berlin. That being said I…

Why would they keep signing up to stay with a guy if not being harassed was out of the norm?

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#194

Post by nicksellen »

h0l0cube wrote: post #187
nicksellen wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the developers working on Trustroots. We're working on references :) I merged this PR yesterday https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1413 , there is a bit more to work out for displaying them... There is also a meetup feature already (see https://ideas.trustroots.org/2017/08/21/meeting-people-now-o... ), it's a bit primitive right now, but it was a first iteration, and we've been discussing some n…

> We are also open source! This is a big deal actually. From what I've heard , One of the reasons why Hospitality Club fell into decline, was that the code-base was closed source and the original developer was reluctant to let go of it.

The open source bit allows the ultimate step of forking the whole project, and that is important to me to be able to do that, but it's not a trivial step at all, and a lot of the usefulness is in the name recognition and the userbase.

But really, I want to contribute to the original project, and given I am not the original developer, it still relies on the them (and any other founders) to open up contributions. Fortunately, in this case, they have :)

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#195

Post by namdnay »

pelario wrote: post #180
namdnay wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had some really good experiences on couchsurfing (hosting and surfing) about 10 years ago, then I moved to a very touristic part of the world, and started getting 90% of requests from couples who were basically looking to get free accommodation for their holidays. I accepted the first 3 times, and each time they would arrive in the evening, unpack, drive to a restaurant they had already booked, come back to sleep a…

A key technique to avoid those situations was the "poisoned pill": buried in your profile there is some keyword they must include in their request. With that (which I copied once I was reading a full descriptive profile) you get a great filter. I have done a good share of CS, both as host and guest, over the last ~10 years, having either good or amazing experiences.

Ah very clever!

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#196

Post by MaxBarraclough »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18
peterburkimsher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetising CS is like demanding a signup fee to join HN: it will drastically change the community.

Hacker News is smaller than most major subreddits in terms of usage. 400 upvotes is considered a lot here. The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. It doesn't process money or really require a lot of content moderation either.

> or really require a lot of content moderation

I'm not sure about that. HN is moderated very effectively. I couldn't comment on the workload there, not being a moderator.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#197

Post by nicksellen »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #189
nicksellen wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the developers working on Trustroots. We're working on references :) I merged this PR yesterday https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1413 , there is a bit more to work out for displaying them... There is also a meetup feature already (see https://ideas.trustroots.org/2017/08/21/meeting-people-now-o... ), it's a bit primitive right now, but it was a first iteration, and we've been discussing some n…

It's possible to export my data from CS. Would the Trustroots community be willing to have a CS data import option, for bringing in old CS references and friends?

You're welcome to join our team chat and we can discuss further (send me an email, address in profile, then I can invite you).

(most relevant, but dated, PR is https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1086)

(I also saw your comments on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219900)

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#198

Post by vincnetas »

welly wrote: post #185
vincnetas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a world outside USA also ;) And you don't need money to travel.

You don't need money to travel beyond your front door/neighbourhood but come on, you need "some" money to travel. You can't travel without a penny in your pocket.

You can. On expense of other people good will. And give them something in exchange. Good company, manual labor, songs, whatever. Of course we need to agree on definition of "travel" first ;)

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#199

Post by welly »

dkersten wrote: post #192
welly wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be very involved with couchsurfing in the late 2000s and early 2010s I had a high number of women couchsurfers, which came about from having positive feedback from other female couchsurfers, because like you they had their own bed and I wasn't trying to have sex with them. It started being a concern because I began to think that people looking at my profile would assume that I was just looking to host women…

I hosted a lot of people in summer of 2008. All of my housemates were into couchsurfing too (mixed gender house: two guys and three girls, that probably helped), so there was a period where we always hosted at least one person. One weekend, for a couchsurfing event in my city, we hosted 12 people at once! We eventually stopped hosting because people got busy and priorities changed, but our experience as hosts was ver…

You certainly do hear creepy stories about hosts surprising guests by only having one bed. And more than that. Of course, if everything is mutually agreed then that's fine.

I was actually pretty surprised when I was speaking to another couchsurfing host how many women he'd hosted that he'd slept with. Perhaps I'm (or was) naive but it never occurred to me that people would use it for hooking up.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#200

Post by spiritplumber »

I ended up with two meth heads who sort of moved in and would not leave, they even tried to get me arrested for trespassing in my own home, supposedly on grounds of they were US citizens and I was not. Fortunately the cop that showed up spoke Italian and we sorted it out. It was weird. On the other hand, I have made three lifelong friends thanks to hospitality, so the balance is positive.
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